The Changing Landscape of Mental Health

When I was asked to write about my ideas on mental health, I agreed with such enthusiasm that even my anxiety got anxious. A quick session of meditation and couple of comedy shows later centred my mind to the task. Some would argue it’s procrastination, I agree, but procrastination is a good divergent for the mind, when it’s done right.

Mental illness is invisible, we can’t diagnose something if we truly don’t understand it, and our physical senses can betray us with what we can’t see, yet it’s not impossible to approach.

Mental health issue is a sensitive subject that most people don’t like to talk about. It’s been stigmatised that even mentioning mental illness puts the mind on edge, and it shouldn’t, we must be able to talk about it freely without judgement or scrutiny, and approach it not only through scientific channels, but see it for what it really is: another untapped level of the human condition.

Mental illness is invisible, we can’t diagnose something if we truly don’t understand it, and our physical senses can betray us with what we can’t see, yet it’s not impossible to approach. This disguised imbalance is so deep that mental healthcare professionals can have quite a predicament giving a diagnosis, and in the meantime, having a rift in the healthcare system does not leave much room for those professionals to stand on. That’s why it is imperative to educate the public more about mental health problems, take the shame and blame out of the equation, and equip them with tools that can aid in a better comprehension of these issues, like social media is an effective tool to reach a wide audience, ( i.e. this website), also more educational seminars by professionals in the fields of psychology and counseling.

Basic human emotions fear, anger and pain – are all essential for survival, however given the wrong conditions they grow into unwanted outcomes, resulting in total chaos of the mind. I’m not an expert, but an observer of the human condition. People with mental illnesses are not broken but they exist in a fragile state of mind, and their stability hang in the balance of where they exist. There has to be an understanding of how and why a perfect storm of emotions brewed in the first place, the mask has to come off in order to see the whole.

There need to be an emphasis that having a mental illness does not define who a person is, it’s an invisible unwanted appendage, perhaps that’s why they feel so isolated and trapped in their own world. We need to help them, not just survive but abundantly thrive and lead a life of exuberance.

Alla Abdin is a writer, thinker, philosopher and an eternal student of life. Alla is one of the regular contributors to Psychreg. More recently,she appeared on Psychreg Podcastto talk about about some of her experiences and life research related to narcissism and Narcissistic Personality Disorder. You can connect with her on Twitter@AllaAbdin